A video on GameSpot from the other day offers a 30-minute retrospective on id Software as the developer celebrates its 20th anniversary this year (the Wikipedia states they formed on February 1, 1991). The clip is captioned as a chat with the company's founders, but the only actual founder they hear from is John Carmack, though the piece also features comments on id's games and history from long-time standbys Tim Willits and Todd Hollenshead (thanks Auger). Along with the nostalgia, the clip concludes with an interesting comment about the future from Todd Hollenshead, who says with a smile that fans of id's various IPs will be rewarded down the road:

For the future, of course, our big focus is on RAGE, and that's coming out this fall, and so that's what we're all focused on here. But you know looking in the, sort of the crystal ball, down the road, DOOM [4] is in development obviously, and so that's something we're going to look forward to a future release. We continue to grow the studio to look to explore the other IPs as well, so for, you know, QUAKE, Wolfenstein, RAGE, DOOM, you know, those are four brands that we're very fond of here that we anticipate working on and having an affiliation with as we go forward in the future, and I think the fans of those properties are going to be… their patience will be rewarded, let me say that.

ID should talk to gearbox.. ID has forgotten what the games that made them a legend PLAY like. and I did play the originals when they were new! Nowadays it is all engine design, all graphics, with id we know story is irrelevant, but bring ACTION back in your games!! stop with the dog slow ports..we care more about high speed action than about how many warts are in each demon... less hitscan weaponry..more dodgeable weapons <hard to dodge obviously, fast paced game!> or if you want slower for the consoles, change a few weapons, its not that hard..

I wonder if those sequels will come with regenerating health like it looks like Rage has from the videos I've watched. I haven't enjoyed one single first person shooter built around that game destroying feature.

Paketep wrote on Aug 15, 2011, 19:29:Raven can't do multiplayer anymore. The last Wolfenstein's multi was a complete embarrasment for them...

Not really.

Raven was not contracted to do the Multiplayer component of Wolfenstein.

Endrant Studios was. No idea why a new, untested studio was trusted with flagship IP multiplayer component. Have to ask Todd that one.

Coincidentally, almost immediately after the game shipped, the majority of staff at Endrant were laid off, shortly followed by the complete closing of the studio, making support of the MP component of the game a godawful nightmare for both Raven and id.

Raven can't do multiplayer anymore. The last Wolfenstein's multi was a complete embarrasment for them, which is probably why they only put out a half-assed patch and then threw a lot of sand over all of it. Come on, how difficult is it to get fucking Enemy Territory, add better graphics, add some maps and be done with it?. But no, they managed to fuck it up completely. Whose idea was to dumb down the classes?. Who thought the veil would work in multi?. Even the community manager left, tired of the complaining.

The last decent multi Raven did was Soldier of Fortune. Nowadays I only expect decent single player from them. And it Willits gets his wish and they start putting always-on DRM, they can forget about my money, even in sales.

Ray Marden wrote on Aug 15, 2011, 18:18:I hope they honor the tone and world of the original Quake, I would like to see somebody recapture the magic of Doom, and Wolfenstein needs to figure out what type of game it wants to be.

Wanting my damn Hexen and Heretic sequels,Ray

+1

the amount of hours i got out of the quake and doom demo's let alone the full versions! I don't think I've played any game that much since.

I'd love a proper quake 1 sequel - zipping around a castle blowing away ogre's and zombies with modern weaponry. something fast paced (oh wait i just realised you can't do fast paced on consoles unless you give them a mouse...)

_________________________________________________"Money doesn't exist in the 24th century, the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity." - Jean-Luc Picard

It has been a decade since I truly enjoyed a Raven game. Otherwise, you go to them for an on-time, on-budget generic shooter, but their recent games tend to be either bland or short of achieving anything special. Wolfenstein and Singularity just seemed like two versions of the same competent, but straight forward game.Quake 4 was easily the worst in the series.Looking at the id video, it just seems like all the normal stuff. We're great because we do tech. We're great because other people made stuff with our engines. We don't want to bother with licenses. Carmack just wants to program and not deal with anybody. We finally did one new IP, but we'll go back and remake all the other ones.

I just wonder if anybody at id really actually has a passion for gaming? Lookinga at the remakes, I hope they honor the tone and world of the original Quake, I would like to see somebody recapture the magic of Doom, and Wolfenstein needs to figure out what type of game it wants to be.

Soldier Of Fortune and Star Trek: Elite Force were both excellent games, the latter having a surprisingly good multiplayer community - I was surprised by the number of decent 3rd party maps. Quake 4 was solid, though incredibly generic. Wolfenstein I wanted to pick up after playing the demo but it took a long time to appear on Steam in the UK and is way over priced.

As for id Software, I'd go as far as to say they haven't produced a decent game since Quake 3, which was over a decade ago. Even that I didn't think was as good as Unreal Tournament. Doom 3 was solid, though the gameplay was very dated for the time - Half-Life 2 was just around the corner and other games had offered much more meaningful gameplay. RAGE looks to be the same affair. I'll definitely pick it up at some point but would be amazed if it really grabbed me.

Fion wrote on Aug 15, 2011, 17:19:On the Raven sub-topic, come on guys, Raven has made a lot of very good games since Hexen 2. Star Trek: Elite Force, F.E.A.R. 1, Jedi Outcast (and somewhat Academy, though the multiplayer was 'eh' on Academy), Solder of Fortune 1/2 (mostly 1). I'd even include Xmen: Wolverine, that game was easily the best 'movie game' I've ever played.

Though I SO very want a new Heretic! Raven, get on it. Heretic 4 using Id Tech 5.

F.E.A.R was actually Monolith, but that aside, I agree with you completely.

I played Heretic DM far more than Doom DM. Phoenix Rod just kicked ass. 3 of my buddies would come over to my place and we'd LAN party for entire weekends. My first gaming project was working on a gameroom add-in for Mustang bulletin board operators that would allow them to run a IPX network over multiple modem connections for this game...unfortunately this little thing called the internet popped up around the time we were finishing it up...

^Drag0n^ wrote on Aug 15, 2011, 14:07:I'm probably in the vast minority of people that didn't like Quake 2. Didn't care for the Strogg thing AT ALL. It almost seemed like they were trying to fuse Doom into the Quake IP. I thought the DM was too slow, and they balanced the guns to the point of stupidity. Why get a big gun if there is no advantage? The guns also took up far too much space in the viewport.

Q3A repaired the bridge for me, though. It seemed more like Quakeworld updated for hardware acceleration.

Though I still miss that F-ed up fusion of tech and medieval architecture.

I still maintain that the rocket launcher in Quake 1 was the perfect FPS weapon. They gutted it in Quake 2 and tried to bring it back in Quake 3, but there has never been a weapon as fun to use as the original Quake's rocket launcher.

I'm not looking forward to the inevitable milking of id Software's old franchises. They'll never be able to recreate the Doom single player experience or the Quake multiplayer experience. The chemistry that lead to those experiences has been lost to the sands of time.

I lost interest with ID after Quake 2, so meh. Have really good memories of qtest and winquake as well as Zoid's CTF and CTF 2 addons. After that they pretty much lost the vision, imho. Too many reboots of previous IP's. All they are now to me is a company others will use their tech for their games. Don't even get me started on quake live...

On the Raven sub-topic, come on guys, Raven has made a lot of very good games since Hexen 2. Star Trek: Elite Force, F.E.A.R. 1, Jedi Outcast (and somewhat Academy, though the multiplayer was 'eh' on Academy), Solder of Fortune 1/2 (mostly 1). I'd even include Xmen: Wolverine, that game was easily the best 'movie game' I've ever played.

Though I SO very want a new Heretic! Raven, get on it. Heretic 4 using Id Tech 5.

I'm probably in the vast minority of people that didn't like Quake 2. Didn't care for the Strogg thing AT ALL.

All I will say is quake 2 CTF some of those big out door maps (what was the one with the cave you had to pass through?) running, bunny hopping as fast as you can with rockets zipping past & the whole other side in chase. I used to love exiting a building into a big open area with people in chase then seeing team mates going the other way then realise you have the flag & do everything they can for you. The slightly slower speed of the game made that incredible, now days the flag goes & you have very little chance to chase them down.